BEIJING - Canada hit the gas after a sluggish start in Beijing to produce one of the country's best performances at a Summer Olympiad.
But team officials say if the country aspires to have more than a bit part on the biggest sports stage on the planet, Canadians have to care more about their Olympians with their hearts and wallets.
Eighteen medals -- three gold, nine silver, six bronze -- ties Canada's second-best performance at a non-boycotted Games. The country collected 22 in Atlanta in 1996 and 18 four years prior in Barcelona.
Canada's best total was 44 in 1984, when a Soviet-led boycott of the Olympics weakened the field.
Finishing tied for 14th with Spain in total medals among 204 countries meets the Canadian Olympic Committee's target of a top-16 result.
Top 12 is the goal for 2012 in London. The mood at the COC's closing news conference Sunday was upbeat, but Alex Baumann sounded a cold note on Canada's prospects four years from now.
The former swimming gold medallist, now head of the Road To Excellence initiative, decides which athletes deserve more money based on their performance.
After conversations in Beijing with his equivalents from Australia, Britain and New Zealand, Baumann says top 12 in London isn't realistic at the current rate of funding for the Canadian team.
Canada may have committed to spending a record $166 million on summer and winter sport in 2008-09, but the country continues to lag behind the world's elite.
UK Sport has been pumping 100 million pounds (C$195 million) annually into its athletes to field a strong host team in 2012. The Australians' budget of $250 million a year could jump as high as $450 million.
"It's not cheap," Baumann said.
Yet, both teams are getting what they're paying for. Britain jumped from 30 medals in Athens to 47 in Beijing, the fourth-highest total of the Games. Australia was right behind with 46, despite boasting a population of just 21.4 million people.
The ante will be upped for 2012, and Canada was just starting to play catch-up here.
"The challenge for RTE is to maintain our position," Baumann said. "I do think Canada can get to the top 12 in 2012, but it's going to take a big effort. I do think there is a need for more investment."
China, U.S. dominate
As expected, the U.S. and host China took most of the medals off the table with 110 and 100 respectively. China led with 51 gold medals and was thus ranked No. 1 by the International Olympic Committee.
Russia was third with 72 total medals. The top four countries accounted for almost a third of all the medals won.
Led by Michael Phelps -- with eight gold medals clanging on his chest -- the U.S. dominated swimming. The Americans were not up to their usual standards at the track, however, and were usurped in the sprints by Jamaicans.
World records fell before Usain Bolt's feet as the lanky Jamaican won the 100 and 200 metres and helped his country take gold in the 4x100 relay.
The Chinese raked up gold in diving, gymnastics and weightlifting, but it seemed the host country was somewhere on the podium in almost every event, which reflects how much of a sports machine this country has become.
It was a nervous first seven days of the Games for the Canadian team with nary a medal. Wrestlers Carol Huynh of Hazelton, B.C., and Tonya Verbeek of Beamsville, Ont., along with the rowing pair of Scott Frandsen of Kelowna, B.C., and Victoria's Dave Calder, kicked off the country's medal run on the second Saturday of the Games. Huynh won gold, the rowers silver and Verbeek bronze.
The country averaged two medals a day after that. Eric Lamaze of Schomberg, Ont., was Canada's lone multi-medallist with a gold in individual show jumping and a silver in the team event.
A dozen medals four years ago in Athens was Canada's lowest total in 20 years. The country needed to get back on the podium and the athletes did, but the gold-medal count remains flat.
Only once since 1984 has the country won more than three gold medals in a single Summer Games -- seven in Barcelona.
"There were a number of events out there where we got a silver and I thought, 'Dammit, just short of the gold,"' COC chief executive officer Chris Rudge said. "Our ultimate objective at some time has to be how many gold medals will we win? We're certainly talking about that a lot more."
Better preparation
He said Canada's preparation for these Olympics was "night and day" better than it was for Athens.
Almost every athlete had been to Beijing for training or competition prior to these Games. The COC held seminars for the athletes who heard from former Olympians on how to navigate the minefield of distractions and frustrations at the Games.
The athletes were better supported by the COC here. When a track and field athlete living outside the village faced a commute to the training facility, someone did a dry run for her, timed it and determined the most efficient route.
Meteorologist Doug Charko issued hourly climate updates, so the equestrian team avoided training in Hong Kong when heat and humidity was at its peak.
Canada Olympic House was closed to the public and open only to families of athletes. The reason for that was to ease stress on athletes from how their parents and siblings were faring in a foreign city, Rudge said.
Baumann says he needs to do more analysis to know exactly how much money the Canadian team needs to reach the top 12 in London. The federal government committed in this year's budget to $24 million more annually for RTE to provide extra money to athletes with medal potential.
"We would appeal to Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper to give us the extra $6 million dollars we'd asked for in the last budget," Rudge said. "We'd asked for $30 (million). Let's look at the extra $50 or $60 (million) we're going to need over the next few years to try and build the kinds of programs they've got in Britain and Australia and the United States.
"If we're going to play with the big boys, if we're going to be a G8 nation, let's be G8 at all levels."
Funding gap
Karen Cockburn, Canada's flag-bearer at the closing ceremonies and silver medallist in trampoline, acknowledged there is a gap between Canada and the top countries in her sport and others.
"It's definitely hard to compete with the top countries, especially when you look at diving, trampoline and gymnastics," she said. "It was so difficult to compete against the Chinese athletes here and the programs they have in place are just amazing.
"Funding has to come early enough that there's time for the athletes to prepare and have access to everything they need and the support they need to compete with the top countries in the world. We're already seeing small improvements and hopefully it's going to continue that way."
While the bulk of the athletes' funding comes from taxpayers through Sport Canada, the summer sports are getting more corporate sponsorship thanks to Own The Podium on the winter side. OTP is the $110-million, five-year plan designed to get Canada to the top of the medal standings at its own 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
Excess money that the Vancouver organizing committee raises in corporate sponsorship flows over to RTE, Rudge said, and sponsors such as RONA and HBC have agreed to sponsor an equal number of summer and winter athletes.
RTE will have $20 million in federal government money to work with in 2008-09, $28 million the following year and $36 million for each of the two years heading into 2012. The sport federations make their pitch to Baumann in November on what they could do with more money.
Canada won medals in 10 sports here and Baumann has said he'd rather concentrate on a core number of sports rather than trying to go too wide.
So it's possible Canada will send fewer athletes than the 332 here in the future. This year's contingent was swelled by teams qualifying in five sports.
"We made a decision some time ago to start targeting the money and we realized we couldn't be a mile wide and an inch deep," Rudge said. "Australia targets the sports where they know they can get medals.
"I'm not sure we can ever be as targeted as that and I don't think Canadians would accept that. We have a certain egalitarian nature that is going to demand that every kid gets a chance, but we can target more than we have in the past."
Baumann's primary goals are more and better coaches for Canada's athletes, more training camps and international competitions for them, and increasing their support in the field of sport science and psychology.
2008 highlights
Canada's highlights of the 2008 Games were gold medals from Huynh, Lamaze and the men's rowing eights. The rowers were world champs heading into Athens four years ago, but fizzled to fifth at the Olympics. They delivered the gold this time.
Lamaze was the redemption story of the Games. He was sacked from two previous Olympic teams for testing positive for cocaine and faced a lifetime ban from the sport. Eight years after he was cleared to compete again, Lamaze rehabilitated his reputation with team silver and individual gold.
Kayaker Adam van Koeverden of Oakville, Ont., recovered from a disastrous 1,000-metre race to take silver in the 500 metres Saturday. Simon Whitfield of Kingston, Ont., ran a smart and gutsy triathlon that came down to a finishing footrace. He earned a silver to go with the gold he won in 2000.
A swimming bronze by Victoria's Ryan Cochrane and another bronze in hurdles at the track by Priscilla Lopes-Schliep of Whitby, Ont., were unexpected. In his ninth appearance at an Olympics, 61-year-old equestrian Ian Millar finally won a medal with the Canadian team's silver.
The lowlights were van Koeverden's 1,000 metres, world champion swimmer Brent Hayden of Mission, B.C., failing to make the final of the 100 metres and Canada missing medals in synchronized diving for the first time since the discipline was introduced in 2000.
Calgary gymnast Kyle Shewfelt worked hard to come back from broken knees and ligament damage suffered just less than a year ago, but was unable to defend his gold medal in the floor routine. Teammate Brandon O'Neill of Edmonton suffered a severely sprained ankle days before the Games opened, which ended Canada's hope of a top-eight finish in the team event.
Fourth-place misses
Canadians finished fourth 10 times in Beijing. The country continues to miss out on medals in team sports. Canada hasn't put a soccer, baseball, basketball, softball or volleyball team on the podium since a basketball silver in 1936.
Canada's medallists received bonus money from the COC for the first time with $20,000 going to gold medallists, $15,000 to silver and $10,000 to bronze. The payout will be over $500,000.
"I like the number. My financial officer does not," COC president Michael Chambers said.
More sports facilities in southwestern Ontario, where 35 per cent of the country's population resides, would increase the country's pool of athletes with medal potential, said Rudge. So it's important that Toronto wins the bid for the 2015 Pan American Games, he added.
Another way to get Canadians thinking about their Olympians for more than two weeks every four years is to get them into people's homes via television. The COC applied to the government for a Canadian amateur sport network and that has yet to be approved.
"The more you see of these tremendous young people, the more you want to see of them, but if you don't see them and you don't know who they are, there isn't that passion to watch them," Rudge said.
A federal election has never been won or lost on a party's standing on sport. It's not likely to be a burning issue in the election call expected to come this fall, even though the COC wishes it would be.
Chambers was wary about the idea of athletes using their post-Olympic profiles to campaign for more money during an election.
"It's tough enough in the ups and downs of the Olympics world. It's another game in the ups and downs of the political world," he said. "Athletes are training to perform in the sports world. We would be very careful how they might be used in the political field."
Canada's performance in Beijing was much improved over Athens. With more money flowing to the athletes, the demand for medals will be even higher in 2012.
